The bitter life of a Canadian musical

by Myron Galloway

A hundred hours of taped on-the-spot listening-in to everything taking place as Rockabye Hamlet headed for Broadway has been edited down to eight and these will be broadcast on the CBC’s radio network in four weekly two-hour segments.

Entitled A Bite Of The Big Apple, this extraordinary piece of radio journalism is the result of a year-and-a-half’s work on the part of singer-dancer-actress, Malka; that lady with the single name who gave up a highly successful singing career to become an award-winning creator of radio documentaries. Lately she has concentrated on in-depth profiles of personalities from both politics and the arts.

“There are no heroes or villains in this piece,” Malka said. “And I’ve tried not to concentrate on any one person throughout the series. Everyone is presented as he behaved throughout the whole grueling experience.”

The result is radio-journalism at its most nakedly revealing.

As each of the four segments of this astonishingly frank and frequently shocking documentary unfolds, the average listener, unfamiliar with the often degrading brutality of the Broadway theatre, may be remembering those movie fantasies starring Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell, or Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland where the Broadway producer stumbled across the amateur summer musical and had it moved intact to the Great White Way and everyone involved became the toast of New York overnight.

The reality of the theatre was never like that, then… or now.

Reality is what we hear in Malka’s A Bite Of The Big Apple, full of uncertainty and doubt, where changes are made in cast, script, director and choreographer. Where personal loyalties go by the board as attitudes shift and the Broadway-bound killer instinct takes over. Where niceties of language are an almost unbearable tension holds everyone in a relentless grip as opening night approaches.

The months preceding an opening night are much the same, whether a show is a hit or a flop.

As one sage backer of Rockabye Hamlet commented: “When you put money in a show there is always the chance you will get it back with interest; but when you put your time in a show you’re giving a part of your life you never get back.”

Asked to comment on the musical Rockabye Hamlet after its opening on Broadway, February 16, 1976, Clive Barnes, drama critic for The New York Times said: “It’s like washing garbage … and you know what you get when you wash garbage. Washed garbage.”

Almost a year earlier in Toronto,theatre critic MacKenzie Porter predicted: “It won’t last seven days in New York. It’s a disaster.”

At a loss of more than a million dollars, Rockabye Hamlet, better known in Canada where it all began as Kronberg 1582, closed after exactly seven days.

Exorbitantly expensive musical disasters are not uncommon on Broadway. Joe Allen’s restaurant, a favorite hang out of theater folk in the heart of New York’s theater district on West 46th Street, has its walls decorated exclusively with framed posters of musicals that failed to make it at the box office. And the walls are covered.

After a show has expired one may for days run across laments in the press, usually written by playwrights, directors or producers, speculating on the cause of its failure. In most cases the blame for a show’s quick demise is placed on the shoulders of the critics who are referred to as “vicious”, “stupid” or “deliberately cruel” (In the case of Rockabye Hamlet the adjectives were considerably more lurid.) Shortly thereafter, the entire failed project is mercifully forgotten… or almost. Not so in the case of Rockabye Hamlet.

While the musical itself may be now as dead as the Dodo, that extinct bird which no amount of cooking could ever make palatable, a detailed record of the production from auditions in Toronto, to the outraged curses of backers, producers, performers and agents as the listened to the first reviews on television after the opening on Broadway, has been preserved on tape.

….A hundred hours of taped on-the-spot listening-in to everything taking place as Rockabye Hamlet headed for Broadway has been edited down to eight and these will be broadcast on the CBC’s radio network in four weekly two-hour segments.

Entitled A Bite Of The Big Apple, this extraordinary piece of radio journalism is the result of a year-and-a-half’s work on the part of singer-dancer-actress, Malka; that lady with the single name who gave up a highly successful singing career to become an award-winning creator of radio documentaries. Lately she has concentrated on in-depth profiles of personalities from both politics and the arts.

“But A Bite Of The Big Apple,” she said, “is something quite different. It might be called an in-depth account of what happens to a Broadway-bound musical along every inch of its way.

“When I started I didn’t know the show would be a failure. For that matter I didn’t even know the show would be Kronberg 1582.

“One day I suggested to Ron Solloway, head of radio variety programming for the CBC, that I’d like to get in touch with a producer like David Merrick and find out if I could follow a new show all through its production phase’s right up to its opening on Broadway. Ron agreed. Then we heard that Kronberg which was playing at the Charlottetown Festival would be going to New York. That was it. We had our own Canadian production to follow.

“What I hope emerges is a true and unvarnished picture of the heart-breaking and frequently degrading experience the theatre can sometimes be for those whose livelihood depends upon it. A Bite Of The Big Apple is a behind-the-scenes look at what few people outside the theatre ever know about.

“It is not intended primarily as a record of what happened in the case of Kronberg, but of what happens to any Broadway-bound show where so much is as stake. Rockabye Hamlet turned out to be a failure, but many of the same things would have happened along the way if it had been a hit.

No one is quite sure how New York producer Lester Osterman became interested in the production. The unverified rumor is that Colleen Dewhurst, who was at the time appearing in Osterman’s production of A Moon For The Misbegotten on Broadway, saw it the Charlottetown Festival and persuaded him to come up and see it. Osterman was wildly enthusiastic, and determined to bring it into New York with the original cast. The plan was that the show would complete its summer season in Charlottetown, be polished up, then given a Spring Tour of four Canadian cities, Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa and Hamilton then open on Broadway early in October 1975. Before embarking on its Spring tour, however, new auditions were held in Toronto.

It was at this point Malka was granted permission to record the proceedings.

“Everybody knew what I was there for and I made sure to use a very large and conspicuous microphone so that nobody could say afterward they didn’t know anything was being recorded. Myself I made as inconspicuous as possible. I even wore rubber soled shoes so as not to disturb anybody while I moved about.”

In the year that stretched ahead she was to do a lot of moving about as her recorder captured the voices of producers and backers, choreographers, performers, sound men, seamstresses, carpenters, designers, members of the backstage crew, public relations people, men from the advertising agencies, program sellers, ushers, critics, members of the first-night audience and the professional autograph hunters who gather on the sidewalk in front of any theatre where an opening night performance is taking place.

There are also conversations that took place at Sardi’s…and even one with a man who runs an audition school where performers learn how to audition. This man knew what producers looked for in candidates, over and above talent. For instance he could tip a girl off about so and so who had a weakness for girls with red hair, were not too tall and spoke softly. Before attending an audition she could put on a red wig, the right stockings, wear low-heeled shoes and speak a little above a whisper. Chances were she’d get the job.

When Kronberg was first produced, the role of Hamlet was played by Cal Dodd, a singer Jones had specifically written songs for. When Osterman saw the show and decided to take it to Broadway, it was largely due to Dodd’s performance. When the show auditioned before the Canadian tour Dodd was replaced by Brent Carver.

Why?

You hear Dodd’s offstage and on-stage behavior being discussed by the producers. You hear Dodd’s justification and you hear him auditioning with Carver. You hear each of them singing a phrase and it becomes clear Dodd is the better song stylist. But Carver gets the role. Throughout the Spring tour and following summer in Charlottetown Carver is under constant threat that Dodd will eventually replace him. Dodd is brought back to audition time and time again. Suspense mounts. But when the show finally moves to New York to rehearse, new auditions are held and the entire cast is replaced with the exception of Beverly D’Angelo in the role of Ophelia and, ironically enough, Dodd’s brother Rory in the role of Horatio.

When the show played Hamilton , Gower Champion was brought in to have a look at it. Why?

Everyone knew he was out front, but everyone was secretive. No one wanted to mention it in case director Alan Lund would hear about it. Lund did hear, naturally, and wondered what it meant. Was he being replaced? Would they be working together as co-directors, co-choreographers? No one would say. Lund becomes insecure. A week before the show is ready to leave for New York you hear him talking to Jones, his voice breaking as he asks if Cliff has any idea of what’s happening. In the end Lund was dropped. Champion took over.

When it becomes clear Lund will not be going on with the show, Malka tries to ascertain how disappointed he is. His voice, hoarse with emotion can be heard trying to make light of it, but betraying himself when he points out there are worse things that could happen to a man and, as an example, tells her that a good friend of his had recently lost his son in a drowning accident.

Roma Hearn suffered several broken limbs in an automobile accident during the summer. Promised that the role of Gertrude would be held open for her she exerts almost superhuman efforts in her attempt to walk months before doctors thought possible. Finally on her feet again, she discovers she has been replaced in the New York cast, but nobody has bothered to tell her.

We hear auditions being held in New York months later and we are backstage on opening night at the Minskoff Theatre.

Malka explains the difference: “With the Canadians at the O’Keefe the feeling is entirely different than it is with the American company at the Minskoff. In Toronto the show’s run is guaranteed. In New York everything is riding on what happens at the opening.”

We sit in on business meetings in New York, where, among other things the price to be charged for tickets is discussed.

We are present during last-minute costume fittings when tempers flare and seamstresses become as angry as performers.

As the months pass, telescoped into hours, we become aware of the personal changes taking place in some of the principal characters in this real-life drama… people like Cliff Jones and Beverly D’Angelo who were in it from the beginning.

D’Angelo, who knew so little about the theatre when she started that she asked upon first entering the Confederation Theatre in Charlottetown, “Is this a real theatre or an auditorium?” becomes conscious of the fact that she must present a different image of herself in New York.

Jones admits after the entire experience is over that he quite deliberately played “the wide-eyed innocent” because that seemed the sort of role expected of him during rehearsals. There is little that is wide-eyed or innocent, however, in his anger after reading the Barnes review when he threatens to sue the critic for five million dollars for calling him a “second-rate composer with a third-rate mind.”

The four segments of the radio program are presented in chronological order. The first is called The Broadway Bandwagon Begins to Roll. The second: Paying Dues: The Rehearsals. The third: The Canadian Tryout and the American Takeover. The fourth: The Sour Taste of the Big Apple.

“There are no heroes or villains in this piece,” Malka said. “And I’ve tried not to concentrate on any one person throughout the series. Everyone is presented as he behaved throughout the whole grueling experience.”

The result is radio-journalism at its most nakedly revealing.

As each of the four segments of this astonishingly frank and frequently shocking documentary unfolds, the average listener, unfamiliar with the often degrading brutality of the Broadway theatre, may find himself expressing the opinion that he is not surprised Rockabye Hamlet failed.

He may be remembering those movie fantasies starring Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell, or Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland where the Broadway producer stumbled across the amateur summer musical and had it moved intact to the Great White Way and everyone involved became the toast of New York overnight.

The reality of the theatre was never like that, then… or now.

Reality is what we hear in Malka’s A Bite Of The Big Apple, full of uncertainty and doubt, where changes are made in cast, script, director and choreographer. Where personal loyalties go by the board as attitudes shift and the Broadway-bound killer instinct takes over. Where niceties of language are an almost unbearable tension holds everyone in a relentless grip as opening night approaches.

The months preceding an opening night are much the same, whether a show is a hit or a flop.

As one sage backer of Rockabye Hamlet commented: “When you put money in a show there is always the chance you will get it back with interest; but when you put your time in a show you’re giving a part of your life you never get back.”